by RUPERT BOTTENBERG
At the upcoming Osheaga festival in Montreal, Oklahoma’s woolly wizards of weirdness the Flaming Lips will join other major names from the domain of ’90s alternative rock, including Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. The latter’s longevity is comparable to that of the Lips, but while Sonic Youth can still squeeze inspiration out of fucked-up tunings and squalls of distortion, they haven’t matched the Lips’ remarkable evolutionary leaps.
Formed in 1983, the Flaming Lips married punk’s crude frenzy to psychedelic rock’s lysergic loopiness. Their sonic concoction served them well at the advent of grunge in the ’90s, leading to both a major-label hit, 1993’s “She Don’t Use Jelly,” and experimental tangents like Zaireeka, a four-disc set intended to be played simultaneously.
The arrival of the millennium saw the band not only thriving, but reaching amazing new creative heights. With the help of producer extraordinaire Dave Fridmann, 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, 2002’s Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots and this year’s At War With the Mystics expanded their sonic palette with warped orchestral arrangements, stirring vocal harmonies and all matter of odds ’n’ ends. The deaths of several loved ones fuelled lyrical leaps into deeper waters, with frontman Wayne Coyne articulating weighty observations about mortality and the individual’s limited consequence on a cosmic scale.
The Flaming Lips’ concerts always had an element of the theatrical and the gimmicky, but the budget bubble machines and busted instruments have given way to events that transcend rock-show routine. Fans in fuzzy-animal costumes capered around the stage with high-powered flashlights while balloons cascaded from on high and a Christ-like Coyne “zorbed” across the crowd in a huge, transparent globe, making for evenings that came off like birthday bashes, Halloween parties and uproarious religious rituals rolled into one.
Which isn’t to say the Flaming Lips have found religion. More like found religion revolting, at least in the case of bassist and founding member Michael Ivins, in whose parents’ living room the band had its baptism of fire over two decades ago. The Mirror reached Ivins by phone in the band’s home base, Oklahoma City, where they were busy developing a gigantic flying-saucer stage prop, to debut at the Sept. 15 homecoming show.
Mirror: I was cracking up over Wayne Coyne’s idea for vibrating panties—
Michael Ivins: (laughs) Right!
M: —to pass out to the ladies at shows, to further appreciate the experience. It got me to thinking, though, that the erotic and the sexual don’t seem to play a large part in the Lips’ music. That wouldn’t be of much consequence except that some of the major themes in the Flaming Lips’ music—the inevitability of death, cosmic insignificance—are things that in the human experience, sex, be it for pleasure or procreation, seems to counteract.
MI: Well, we’re certainly not—what’s the term?—a cock-rock band. But I think we would all agree that all that stuff is part of the human experience. We just happen to talk about death and life. But even in the pits of despair, there is a lot of reaffirming, albeit cautious, optimism. Even though death is inevitable and life is hard sometimes, it’s not worth not living. I think that’s some of the problem, frankly, with a lot of this religious fanaticism that seems to be gripping the world at this point. Everyone’s so worried about what’s going to happen after they die that they don’t pay any attention to actually living life.
Bad news, Virginia
M: I saw you guys last time you came through Montreal, and it struck me as a euphoric experience—the same way a Pink Floyd show would be, except that it really seemed to obligate a sense of togetherness in the audience, like religious gatherings, but without the trappings and moralizing of religion.
MI: Well, yeah, that’s the point, I think. What do you need all that for? I think we—I know I certainly did—grow up being taught that you should embrace all ways of looking at things and respect people’s beliefs. But I don’t know. As things are going along, I’ve actually become more militant in my anti-religious stance. Even people who beat around the bush and say, “You can be spiritual”—whatever the hell that means. It’s just not real to me.
We don’t believe in elves, but you don’t say, because you don’t believe in them, they might exist. It’s just a general fact that elves don’t exist, and I don’t know why that doesn’t apply to the invisible spirit in the sky. Much like Santa Claus—I love throwing this analogy out. If you’re born in America—and maybe Canada too, I don’t know how much you guys are into the Santa Claus idea—when you’re a kid, you actually believe there is a Santa Claus. You write to him, and even now, you can go on the Internet and NORAD is tracking him on radar. Which is all great and everything, but in this society, most people are presented with these two ideas, Santa Claus and Jesus Christ. Both of whom live up there—Santa in the North Pole somewhere, Jesus up in the sky—and they both watch you to make sure that you’re being good, and you’re either rewarded or punished depending on whether you’re good or bad. When you hit five or six, somewhere in that age, you have to give one of them up. One of them is not real, and you have to give him up—and you have one guess who.
Man, we have to stop. All of this stuff. Muslims, Judaism, Christianity—it’s all gotta go. It’s an idea that has way, way outlived its service. I think it’s detrimental to the whole human species. We have to move on. It just seems childish.
To here from eternity
M: The really fundamentalist and apocalyptic religious types, from all religions, seem to be digging their heels into the ground. They recognize that this faith they’ve been clinging to is being disproved and chiselled away, bit by bit, by reality.
MI: That’s the point, I think, that reality is this wonderful and fantastic thing, but does there need to be a purpose behind it all? I don’t think so. What does it matter? And what does it matter what happens after we die? I think that served its purpose for people who lived in shit houses 1,000 years ago—when life actually sucked. You were lucky to live past 30. Anywhere would have been better than where you were living. Now, what is the problem? How is life so bad right now that you would get on an airplane and make a bomb and blow it up with yourself and other people? I’m going to do this stuff, gain brownie points with Santa Claus in the sky and then get to go live forever, somewhere, in a land of milk and honey. I don’t know about you, but I’d get tired of that pretty quick.
M: There’s a political flavour to At War With the Mystics.
MI: Sure. I think what happened with that is, we do tend to look inside, the inside life, death and what that means to the individual, and as we were making this newest record, we were just bombarded so much that it was hard to ignore the things going on around us. It was just so ridiculous, and it still is, all the way around. I know some of the stuff—things happen on people’s watches, and sometimes you can’t really do too much, but of course, people either rise to the challenge or not. There just seems to be a lack of competency in American politics in general, and politics being hijacked by these ideas of apocalyptic visions.
In the same way that those people complain about those other people not thinking of the future and just living for the pleasure of the moment, these apocalyptic people are doing the same thing, saying, “Well, it doesn’t matter because there’s gonna be this second coming, so who cares what happens?” That’s why all the forests were left to burn in the mid-’80s, here in America, because our government is full of people who just have these weird, wacky ideas. It just doesn’t make any sense. Right now—I mean right now—somebody should be standing up and saying to auto makers, “Stop making gasoline cars. Every car that comes out from now on, from today, is a hybrid car. You don’t have a choice.” Because it just makes sense. Patriotic sense, even.
At Parc Jean Drapeau on Sunday, Sept. 3, 8:30 p.m., $60 day ticket ($95 for two-day Osheaga festival). Go to www.osheaga.com for complete band list,
schedule and ticket details.
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